Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)

Saturday, 29 April 2017

Ever get the feeling that western "multiculturalism" is turning rapidly into a one-way street?

That the agenda is increasingly moved by and in the interests of one faith supremacist socio-political ideology and one faith supremacist socio-political ideology alone?

That, if you have two X chromosomes rather than XY, you are becoming more and more disenfranchised by those who should be defending your interests?

A sacrificial woman, in fact?

An Australian progressive synagogue with a female assistant rabbi invites the recitation of Islamic prayers in its sacred space, stupidly unaware that the recitations are insulting and that the (male, naturellement) reciters are da'awa activists playing their hosts for fools.

The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, the nice but naive Ephraim Mirvis, calls on Jewish schools to teach another faith: the faith supremacist socio-political ideology he has prescribed is Islam.

The Austrian president, Green leftist Alexander Bellen, disgracefully proclaims that in the fight against "islamophobia" the day might come when "we will have to ask all women to wear the hijab"!

In the Australian state of Victoria, the ALP (Labor) government of Daniel Andrews pours taxpayers' money into countering Islamophobia (warning: video may cause high blood pressure in the politically incorrect rationally worried):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiG2JW7P0xg

btw, I stumbled across this oldie but goody and thought I'd post it for the edification of anyone else who failed to see it at the time.

"The veil is just another firm of mask": good on (former) BBC newsreader Peter
Sissons for exposing, if not her bare face, than at least the barefaced duplicity of
this woman back in 2008.

With her face uncovered she went for a job at a Church of England school in the UK and having been interviewed, by a man as well as a woman, she was employed.

However, when she started work, she astounded her new employers (and probably scared the kids!) by turning up in this Darth Vader-like garment. She then refused to remove it, arguing that no man there must see her face!

A delicious interview, in which the woman, playing the infidel-versus-Muslim victim card, is egregiously evasive, even asking at one point whether she must answer the question.

Thursday, 27 April 2017

Swiftly following his exclusive disturbing revelations regarding the UN's tampering with wording relating to the Balfour Declaration (see the last post but one on here) comes this equally important article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The United Nations Study titled “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1988” (“Study”) has coughed up yet another piece of false information following that exposed in my last article – which indicates increasingly that the United Nations has been complicit in disseminating false information on the Arab-Jewish conflict for almost the last forty years.

The Study was published in June 1978 by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat (DPRUNS) for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIARPP)

I had only reached the third paragraph of the 275 page Study when the following statement caught my attention:

“The decision on the Mandate [for Palestine] did not take into account the wishes of the people of Palestine”

I could scarcely believe this dishonest statement had actually originated in a United Nations official publication – especially as the evidence contradicting this falsehood was sitting in the United Nations own archives.

That evidence comprises:

1. Meetings of the Palestine Arab Delegation (Delegation) with the recently appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies – Winston Churchill – on 12, 22 and 23 August 1921

2. Letters from 21 February 1922 to 23 June 1922 between the Delegation and the Secretary of State for the Colonies during which the Delegation was housed in the Hotel Cecil in London.

The letters disclose that:

1. The Delegation failed to persuade Britain to abandon the Mandate for Palestine providing for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

2. The British Government had adopted a fresh definition of policy to finally allay the Delegation’s apprehensions as to the scope and purport of British policy.

The Study’s failure to disclose this evidence is breathtaking.

DPRUNS and CEIARPP clearly sought to hide this evidence to create the false impression that the Palestinian Arabs had been unfairly treated and never been consulted in contrast to the Zionists who had.

This false statement has been repeated verbatim as gospel on many web sites including:

1. “politics.ie” – which claims to be one of Ireland's leading politics and current affairs discussion websites with more than 600,000 visitors a month attracting one of the most engaged, respected and influential politics and current affairs communities.

2. “Academia.edu” – which claims to be a platform for academics to share research papers and to accelerate the world's research with 50,841,190 academics having signed up adding 18,234,570 papers and 2,051,915 research interests – attracting over 36 million unique visitors a month.

4. “UK essays” – which claims to use over 4,000 thoroughly vetted experts with the qualifications and experience to write you the best possible essay.

5. Many virulent Jew-hating and anti-Israel websites that I will not dignify by naming.

False statements such as this take on a life of their own and can influence people in forming their views of the Arab-Jewish conflict. That this disgraceful example should have emanated from the United Nations is outrageous.

DPRUNS and CEIARPP were clearly engaged in creating a false Arab narrative from the Study’s very inception – based on fiction – not fact.
Surely after almost 40 years of this intellectual fraud the UN Secretariat needs to clean up its act, thoroughly review the Study and correct such errors.

The damage has been done, minds and opinions have been poisoned but the United Nations cannot continue to lend its name to this Study in its current form.

Wednesday, 26 April 2017

'Juden verboten in Cairns. This antisemitic business refuses to serve Israelis "out of principle". (Where have I heard that before? ***Cough, Heil Hitler, cough***) Even though Cairns, Australia is a hole in the wall that I never heard of before reading of this outrageous antisemitic boycott, please give this Jew-hating business terrible reviews. Thanks, A Gentile-blood drinking Elder of Zion'

That's just one of the comments by outraged people on the Facebook page of Cold Steel Piercing, the Cairns, north Queensland business which hit the headlines a few days ago for its policy of refusing service to Israelis.

Why any self-respecting person would want to mutilate themselves by getting their nose pierced and the fact that such mutilation contravenes Jewish Law is immaterial.

This boycott of persons for the "crime" of being Israeli is utterly despicable and unconscionable and reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

On the business's Facebook page some people, like the one quoted above, have been telling the business owner exactly what they think of him.

More interesting, however, are the comments of the anti-Israel brigade, including incorrigible pro-BDS activists. They betray their morally corrupt stance for the antisemitism that it is.

Race enough for Hitler, Lachlan, old mate.

British antisemite Pam Arnold/Hardyment has expressed approval.

Meanwhile, antisemitic Alan Lappin, the Aussie would-be politician about whom I've blogged twice in the recent past, is at it again:

Monday, 24 April 2017

Here's the outcome of a fine piece of sleuthing: the latest important article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

An
official United Nations document published by the Division for
Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat contains a
deliberately altered record of a 1922 parliamentary House of Lords
debate on the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Declaration –
dated 2 November 1917 – called for the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people – it being clearly understood that
nothing would be done which might prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and
political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The
Balfour Declaration was subsequently written into international law
after being incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for
Palestine on 24 July 1922.

The upcoming centenary of the Balfour
Declaration has prompted a concerted international campaign calling on
the British Government to apologise for another Government’s decision
taken 100 years ago. Baroness Anelay – Minister of State (Foreign
Commonwealth Office) – told the House of Lords on 3 April 2017 that no
such apology would be forthcoming.

The UN’s rewriting of
Parliamentary debate records actually came to light whilst I was
researching the source of a quote appearing in four articles by Stuart
Littlewood provocatively headlined

All four articles contained the following
quote purportedly made in 1922 by a bitter opponent of the Balfour
Declaration – Lord Sydenham:

“The harm done by dumping down an
alien population upon an Arab country… may never be remedied… What we
have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist
extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can
tell how far that sore will extend.”

My research eventually led to a
United Nations Study titled “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine
Problem: 1917-1988” – the Foreword stating:

“This study has been
prepared by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations
Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the
Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in
pursuance of General Assembly resolution 32/40 B of 2 December 1977.”

This UN Study claimed Lord Sydenham had said:

"... the harm done
by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country - Arab all
around in the hinterland - may never be remedied ... what we have done
is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme
section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how
far that sore will extend"

sourcing this quote to British Hansard –
the official record of parliamentary debates.

“What
we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a
Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one
can tell how far that sore will extend. Zionism will fail, the
experiment to which the noble Earl referred will fail, but the harm done
by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country—Arab all round
in the hinterland— may never be remedied.”

Deliberately
rewriting Hansard raises the distinct possibility there may be other
similar such instances in this UN Study.

A full investigation by the
United Nations Secretariat to discover the reason is urgently required.

An immediate retraction, correction and apology must be made by the UN Secretariat.

Thus, according to the Jihad-aware Indian-born Canadian Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias, is how a Muslim professor in Bethlehem replied when asked by Zacharias how he'd react if his daughter wished to follow a faith other than Islam. (5:58)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnkPVWAF-9k

To quote the uploader:

'This is an uncut version of the raw interview with author and scholar Dr. Ravi Zacharias from the documentary "A Cry From Iran" (about Martyr Bishop Haik Hovsepian) on the topic of Islamic extremists and persecuted Christians, produced and released by Hovsepian Ministries.

Meanwhile, a revealing video on the incursions of the Muslim Brotherhood into North America and its attitude to Hamas and Hezbollah:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPGBq4zGVJI

To quote the uploader:

'In episode 13 of The Third Jihad, Clarion Project exposes numerous groups such as CAIR, ISNA and the Muslim Students Association that would not condemn 9/11, Hamas and Hezbolla. Their parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is responsible for global terror and nurturing many well known terror organizations.'

'The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch condemned the U.N.'s election of Saudi Arabia, "the world's most misogynistic regime," to a 2018-2022 term on its Commission on the Status of Women, the U.N. agency "exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women."'

Like other anti-Zionists before him, he seems to think that the dastardly Zionists will be routed by this revelation:

Sigh.

They don't seem to understand, the Israel-hating brigade, that no matter how many maps and artefacts (and newspapers, posters, football teams, orchestras from the, er, Yishuv!) they trot out with the word "Palestine" embossed upon them the fact remains that there was never a sovereign state of Palestine.

When will these people get it through their heads that the issue is not whether the name Palestine was applied to the Holy Land (it was, by the Romans, in order to erase the Jewish connection with Eretz Israel) but whether there was a sovereign state of Palestine as pro-Palestinian activists such as themselves maintain (there was not, of course, for since its invasion by Romans that land has always been ruled by someone else, latterly the Ottoman Empire, of which it was a backwater)?

Meanwhile, London's School of Oriental Studies (now SOAS), which began life in the first half of lst century as the SOS with a Jewish lecturer in Hebrew, and has since developed into one of the most vicious anti-Israel and antisemitic UK campuses, has Israel's ambassador to the Court of St James in its line of fire:

'As Mark Regev prepares to speak at SOAS later this month, students have called a protest against his proposed visit

Palestinian students and student societies across SOAS have called a protest on 27 April in response to the proposed visit of Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev. Many staff and students are particularly incensed that management has entered direct negotiations with the Embassy, despite the fact that the visit was initially proposed by two students societies: the UN Society and the Jewish Society.

SOAS management has also agreed to have the Israeli Embassy control security for the event, including allowing the Embassy to take details of everyone entering the meeting. Palestinian students wrote a letter to management outlining their concerns over free speech and safety, which was ignored.

Over one hundred staff members have signed a letter to management strongly opposing the event, and any event that takes place on campus and seeks to normalise the actions of the Israeli state or any other repressive regime. The letter also affirms solidarity with the Palestinian people and in the fight for justice. Here we reprint the statement prepared by student societies at SOAS, and support the call to protest on 27 April at 4pm opposing the presence of Mark Regev on campus.

It has come to our attention that the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, will be coming to SOAS on the 27th of April at 19:00. Mr Regev is a well known former spokesperson for the Israeli state who came to international prominence through his defence of the brutal and repeated attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip, including the many violations of human rights and international law carried out throughout these operations.

Firstly [no such word, not-so-learned learned ones; the word you need is 'first'], Mr Regev will be speaking at our University as an official representative of the Israeli state, not in a personal capacity. He is being given the cover of an academic setting to put forward official state positions on the on-going expansion of illegal settlements, the siege of Gaza, land thefts, and discriminatory laws imposed on Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is not an academic debate, informed by fact and reason, it is an official exercise in state propaganda.

This comes flying in the face of a landslide (73%) SOAS vote that included the entire SOAS community, contract staff, academic staff and students, in favour of endorsing the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.The Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) guidelines, explicitly state the refusal to host official representatives of the Israeli state.

The response to the announcement of the event only confirms the SOAS community’s stance. For example, over 100 members of the academic staff have already signed a statement rejecting Mr Regev’s presence on campus.

Secondly, through allowing this event to take place, the school is failing to uphold its basic duty of care to staff and students, Palestinians in particular. Israel’s latest "anti-boycott law" stipulates that individuals (both foreign nationals and Palestinians who hold foreign passports) who publicly support the Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) for justice and equality, can be banned entry into the country.

This law is a blatant breach of free speech and academic freedom. It puts SOAS community in an extremely precarious situation, especially since a number of current staff and students have been denied entry into Israel/Palestine. This is despite the repeated efforts by the school to address these questions of academic freedom. Additionally, this law is yet another example of many attempts to dehumanise Palestinian narratives and criminalise movements and individuals striving to hold Israel to account for its violations of international law and human rights.

The environment created by this event is unsafe for Palestinian students, many of whom have suffered directly at the hands of the Israeli security services. The Ambassador will be accompanied by armed embassy security personnel (whether the arms are concealed or carried openly). Many students fear for their safety with Israeli security personnel roaming our campus. Palestinian staff and students would be subject to the same questioning and searching they suffered living under military occupation in Palestine should they attend a public event.

Thirdly, SOAS management cannot guarantee that this event will take place within the acceptable boundaries of academic freedom and free speech, free from intimidation of all participants. The School has ignored a letter of concern by Palestinian students who asked how the School proposes to guarantee that information about attendees will not be passed on to the embassy through the ticketing mechanism, and how the School proposes to deal with the presence of armed security personnel on campus. It is completely abhorrent that SOAS administration has stated that this visit can go ahead without consulting Palestinian students and staff as part of the risk assessment for the event. Effectively excluding Palestinians from this event.

Indeed, in their latest correspondence to staff, SOAS management claims to be upholding the right to free speech while also taking into account the concerns of all those affected by the event. It is clear that this is not the case as SOAS administration has effectively ignored letters from staff and Palestinian students and refused to engage with Palestinian students especially.

In response, the SOAS community calls on all students, trade unionists, and concerned individuals who believe in the importance of democracy, the right to academic freedom, educational environments free from intimidation and physical threats, and justice for the Palestinian people to join the ‘Apartheid Off Campus’ day on the 27th April in the afternoon at SOAS. A day where the SOAS community will celebrate its diversity and struggles with teach-outs on resistance movements, the situation in Palestine and their relevance in the UK today from 16:00.

Friday, 21 April 2017

Another instance of the "cultural enrichment" that Islam exports to western countries and which western feminists, with a few honourable exceptions, so studiously ignore. I wish I could dub him an Olde Tyme preacher but he is preaching misogyny for the here and now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTlMX9Gu1o0

To quote the uploader, Memri.org:

'In
a fatwa session posted online, Kuwaiti sheikh Othman Al-Khamis cited
the Quranic verse pertaining to wife-beating, and said: "The beatings
must not be hard. It is more of a psychological beating, the purpose of
which is to humiliate the wife." He further explained that "he shouldn't
break her bones, and he shouldn't beat her on the face." A video of his
statements was posted on his YouTube channel on January 31.'

Another Islamic expositor, this one based in Norway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaaqqLEc01UTo quote the same uploader:

'Mullah Fateh Krekar, former founder and leader of the Sunni terrorist group Ansar Al-Islam, said that "all the world’s powers combined" cannot beat the ideology of the Islamic State organization. Mullah Krekar, whose original name is Najmaddin Faraj Ahmad, arrived in Norway in 1991 as a refugee and has been living there since. In an interview with NRT TV, a channel frannel from Iraqi Kurdistan, Krekar said that if the Islamic State is eliminated, a similar group will emerge, because its ideology is rooted in literary sources that are unchangeable, like the Quran and the Hadith. He labeled President Trump's policies "false bravado" and challenged him to send his "most courageous men" to Libya to fight the "lions of Islam." The interview aired on February 20.'

Tuesday, 18 April 2017

"We need to put voices like mine in the House of Commons." So declares British campaigner against Islamic misogyny and creeping sharia Ann Marie Waters, and who, having heard her calmly delivered yet urgent message, spoken earlier this year, can blame her?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3501pCQT20g

We need more voices like hers in influential positions in the West in general, of course, people who tell the truth about Islamic misogyny and refuse to jump through politically correct hoops on its behalf, people like American Professor Phyllis Chesler, whose recent shameful and ludicrous treatment has been well-described by Professor Richard Landes here

Women like the writer of this article on the terrible plight of women in Afghanistan

People who can respond to and neutralise the apologetics for Islam such as characterises this BBC report by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore entitled "Urban Burqa: An artist's striking critique of Islamophobia"

People like Australia's most widely read columnist Andrew Bolt, who today absolutely demolishespreposterous claims by Islam's apologists, following this weekend's airing of an embarassing (to Islam and its leftist allies) Hizb ut-Tahrir video, that violence against women in Islam is not allowed:

'Sure [he concludes], most Muslims probably oppose domestic violence, and many imams say other passages of the Koran recommend mercy. But I’d suggest most also know Mohamed gave men control over their wives and let them beat the disobedient, which is exactly what Keysar Trad, head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, conceded in an interview with me earlier this year.

Trad confirmed that beating wives was “step three” after counselling, but urged: “Before you even consider using your hand, before you consider an act of violence, have you checked box No. 1?”

But when you point all this out, quoting the Koran, apologists protest.

Silma Ihram, a convert from the Australian Muslim Women’s Association, even claimed on Sky News we had “no right” to quote the Koran like this: “That is for a scholar to do and not for you or me.”

More evasion, I’m afraid. You see, the most authoritative scholars confirm the Koran’s plain words.

Take Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars: “If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife”, he should counsel her or stop sleeping with her. But “if this approach fails, it is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive areas”.

Or take Sheik Ahmad al-Tayyeb, Grand Mufti of the Egypt’s famed Al-Azhar Mosque and voted the “most influential Muslim in the world” by the Muslim 500 magazine: “With regard to wife beating ... in a nutshell, it appeared as part of a program to reform the wife …

“By Allah, even if only one woman out of a million can be reformed by light beatings ... It’s not really beating, it’s more like punching ...

“It’s like shoving or poking her. That’s what it is.”

I’m glad apologists say that’s not how they understand the Koran, but they shouldn’t pretend that’s not what Mohamed preached.

Sunday, 16 April 2017

At the site of the attack in Jerusalem that took the life of a young British exchange student and wounded two other people, a mindless anti-Israel activist, asked the above question, splutters a response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C0N9gwGrkY

Perhaps now she's in the Middle East she might care to confront these situations instead.

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

Outside Sotheby's in London, a gaggle of familiar figures unfurl their flags and unleash their slander of Israel; it's the same old stuff, screamed by Sandra, the lady with the beautiful hair and powerful lungs, except that, rather early in the footage (so no need to stay around for the raucous ranting), passers by (I counted three in all) politely challenge the demonisers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEtWlXdE7B4

A second Alex Seymour video from the Old Dart, featuring, to a background track of a tinkling old joanna, footsteps hurrying past a demonstration by the Kick Apartheid Israel Out of Fifa brigade outside the stadium where Spurs and Watford are about to play.

Suddenly, the dulcet tones of Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander himself are heard, interviewing the loquacious Irishman with whose face and voice we have all become so well-acquainted.

Some time ago, the latter and the grey-haired woman who appears in the above video as a sidekick (no pun intended) to Sandra had a habit of boarding London Tube trains and reciting anti-Israel "poetry" to the hapless captive audience.

But this man's main shtik is getting Israel kicked out of FIFA, and as he regretfully explains on camera, there's no chance of that happening this year. But it might happen next.

Monday, 10 April 2017

Amid interruptions, New South Wales treasurer Dominic Perottet and colleague Alister Henskens condemn in state Parliament some dubious company that a couple of opposition Labor MPs have been keeping in connection with protests against Bibi Netanyahu's recent (highly successful) visit to Australia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT3D-_xFlrQ

Reported J-Wire recently, inter alia:

'The Australasian Union of Jewish Students invited members the NSW Young Greens to a meeting with bipartisan young political staffers at the NSW Parliament.But co-convener of the NSW Young Greens Kleon Toffetti confirmed to the Daily Telegraph “We have a longstanding position of not supporting this organisation because … they support the occupation of Palestine­ illegally.”The Telegraph wrote in an email: “It is true that NSWYG have a history of not engaging with AUJS, and I expect that this will continue for the foreseeable future.

A spokesperson for Greens leader Richard di Natale told J-Wire: “The NSW Young Greens are an independent body and we have nothing to do with them. They exercise total independence and in general their views do necessarily reflect ours.”

In a joint statement Isabelle Polgar and Ariel Zohar of AUJS said:

“The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) is angered and disappointed that the NSW Young Greens have informed AUJS it is their official policy to boycott Jewish students. AUJS, the peak representative body of thousands of Jewish tertiary students across Australia and New Zealand, is a pluralistic organisation committed to engaging Jewish students with political parties and activists across the spectrum.

The fact that the NSW Young Greens have chosen to boycott an opportunity to engage with Jewish students on account of their mistaken beliefs about AUJS’ attitudes towards foreign policy speaks volumes of their problematic attitudes towards the Jewish community.

To reduce Australian Jews entirely to their political perspectives on a conflict occurring overseas, and to erroneously pigeonhole the entire Jewish student community as ‘support(ing) the occupation of Palestine’ demonstrates the deep, systematic prejudices which pervade the NSW Young Greens.

This is in line with the far-left trend where hatred for Israel is so strong that it can result in the antisemitic effect where the Jewish community is boycotted for the supposed crime of self-defining its cultural, ethnic and national identity.

We are deeply concerned that the youth wing of the NSW Greens has a policy of refusing to engage with Jewish students. This makes a mockery of the Greens’ recent support for diversity and multiculturalism in the context of the 18C debate.

We hope the NSW Young Greens are swiftly and clearly condemned by the senior party to avoid any suggestion that the Young Greens contempt for the Jewish community is shared by the senior leadership.

AUJS calls on the Leader of the Australian Greens, Richard Di Natale, to unequivocally condemn the executive of the NSW Young Greens and clarify that the Australian Greens want nothing to do with boycotts of the Jewish community.

It is inconceivable that these young leaders could one day become future leaders of the Greens.”

J-Wire contacted Kleon Toffetti who responded: “I will be declining any further comment, or engaging with any media around this.”

In the Aussie Spectator, Mitchell Goff on the hypocrisy and racism of the Greens:

"....Where
in the past left-wing anti-Semites have hid behind the odious Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement or obsessive, pathological criticism
of Israel, this decision pretends to be nothing else but blatant,
unshielded anti-Semitism.

Now, it seems, they just don’t talk to Jews.

This
virulent prejudice is as old as the world itself and it now seems to
reveal itself more publicly in sections of the Left. This sort of
reasoning is how anti-Semitism slips so seamlessly into the sort of
political fascism that if directed at any other group would be the
subject of endless Greens Party condemnation...."

Tardily, a pathetically worded statement (in effect saying that a Jew who disavows Israel is the only acceptable sort of Jew, which is of course the standard position for the Israel-hating Left) from the self-styled "anarcho-communist" Toffetti here

Below, on the Facebook page of an inveterate Israel-hater, a rather delicious example of anti-Israel hypocrisy from another Israel-hater named King and from the liker of his comment, Sizer fan Miranda Pinch, an as-a-Jew Anglican:

In yesterday's London Sunday Times, Anthony Julius and Deborah Lipstadt on the latest Livingstone imbroglio:

"Ken Livingstone, who has been suspended from holding office in the Labour Party following his claims that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism, is a provocateur. That is to say: he doesn’t care about the truth.

To respond to him is already to elevate him; to debate him is a waste of time. Self-pitying, self-admiring, he believes himself to be a truth-telling, special-interest-defying, independent-minded maverick. He cannot be persuaded out of these delusions.

The implication is that anti-semitism is best engaged with at the level of reason, or ignored, following a diagnosis of imbecility. The problem with that approach is that it overlooks the fundamentally malicious nature of anti-semitism. Anti-semites have not reached their conclusions by some faulty line of reasoning that can be corrected. As if Livingstone, when presented with the historical record would say: Oh I see! Gosh, I got it wrong!

Livingstone and people like him conform to a familiar pre-1933 – that is to say pre-Holocaust – type of anti-semite. This kind of anti-semite lived among journalists, politicians and others with access to newspapers, radio stations and other public forums. They could be relied upon to see the Jews behind every scandal, to give a “Jewish twist” to any issue of public concern.

When criticised, they dismissed their critics as in the pay of the special interests that they had exposed. Of course their enemies attacked them: didn’t that prove they were on the right track?

They mostly appealed to constituencies liable to resentment at others’ perceived success. They tended to cast themselves as oppositionists, progressives. Their constituents were down, when they should be up. The Jews were up, when they should be down. Why was this so? A ready answer was always provided.

This explains much in Livingstone’s own career. He found his pleasure in anti-semitic asides mostly in the long years of his own political opposition.

The Times, 7 April 2017

There are three questions that have been raised by the sorry affair. The first question is: does anything that Livingstone has said raise any interesting historiographical issues? The answer is no.

The second question is: why is the Labour Party unable to address the shame that his continued membership brings upon it? The answer to that is that his tastes are shared by too large a fraction of the party — or too large a fraction, at least, of its governing bodies.

And the third question: why are we unable to recognise Livingstone for what he is? The answer lies in the history of anti-semitism. If anti-semitism blinds people to the world, then the recent history of anti-semitism has blinded people to its earlier history. Specifically, the Holocaust has blinded us to the pre-Holocaust diversity of anti-semites. There any many species in the anti-semitic bestiary.

Anti-semitism has right-wing versions, but also leftist ones

There are religious versions – principally, Christian versions, and at least one Muslim version; political versions – principally, right-wing versions, but also liberal and leftist ones. And yet Hitler’s programme of genocide has come to define anti-semitism. It is as if the horror of Hitler’s mass murder of Jews has erased the assaults and exclusions, the slurs and defamations that conditioned their existence before Nazism. The pre-Nazi history of anti-semitism has been lost; non-Nazi contemporary anti-semitisms are inadequately acknowledged, when not altogether defined out of existence.

Imagine these various kinds of anti-semites as denizens of an ugly zoo. And imagine that they flourish there, attended by zoo keepers – let them stand as a sympathetic or neutral “state”. At different times, some beasts will flourish more than others. Some will draw the attention of visitors more than others. But they co-exist – the social anti-semites, the progressives, the Christian and Muslim and secular anti-semites, the reactionaries.

Then suppose that one night, while the management of the zoo sleeps, the ugliest and most dangerous of them all, the exterminationist anti-semite, breaks out of his cage and goes on a rampage in the town. After bloody battles, he is destroyed. The zoo itself is wrecked; many of the other beasts die or go into hiding. One or two, appalled by what has happened, abandon their home.

In due course, the townspeople forget about the zoo’s history; they remember only the moment of the rampage. In their minds, where once there was a variety of anti-semites, different in menace and in intensity of conviction, now there is just one type – and he is dead.

Quietly, patiently, with the assistance of the returning zoo keepers, the other beasts begin their work of reconstruction, inviting in other beasts from other zoos. The townspeople stop going to the zoo. And then one day, they wake up to find that it is flourishing once again."

Thursday, 6 April 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Ambassadors
to Israel representing 28 European Union States (EU) behaved most
undiplomatically in ambushing the recently appointed Director of
Israel’s Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador to Australia – Yuval
Rotem – at a meet and greet function Rotem had organised at the Dan
Hotel in Tel Aviv last week.

Instead of the pleasant banter over
drinks and canapes usually associated with such events on the diplomatic
cocktail circuit the function erupted into an explosive EU protest
against Israel’s plans to evict Arab squatters from 42 structures that
had been illegally erected between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem at the
strategically narrowest point in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) known as
E1.

Lars Faarburg-Andersen – the EU Ambassador to Israel – took
the opportunity to read out to Rotem the following one-page document
which had been approved by the EU political-security committee – in
which all 28 member states are represented.

This gauche
and uncivilised behaviour was certainly uncalled for and not conduct
that one would ever expect to come from refined and cultured Europeans.

Reading
this carefully-crafted statement at the function was a cavalier action
aggravating the already strained relationship between the EU and Israel
following the EU’s introduction on 11 November 2015 of labelling requirements for goods produced in Judea and Samaria entering Europe.

The statement revealingly exposes the hypocrisy of the EU for the following reasons:

1.
It was presented as a “demarche” – a diplomatic or official initiative –
a protest normally delivered through diplomatic channels – not at a
cocktail function.

2. The statement confirms EU members were
involved – without Israel’s approval - in the funding of these
particular illegal structures located in Area C of Judea and Samaria –
where Israel has sole administrative and security control under the 1993
Oslo Accords.

This is not the first occasion the EU has sought
to impose itself in Area C by supporting illegal Arab building
activities where it has no legal right to be present or involved.

On
13 December 2016 the EU Representative and the EU Heads of Mission in
Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a statement acknowledging that
humanitarian structures provided by the EU and EU Member States in 2016
worth approximately EUR 536,000 had been either destroyed or
confiscated.

The EU then claimed that its activities were
humanitarian and carried out in full accordance with International
Humanitarian Law – with the “sole aim” of providing humanitarian support
to the most vulnerable population.
Yet this pious claim has exploded in its face with its own admission in the demarche that:

“The
EU and EU member States are united in the view that Area C is of
critical importance for the viability of a future Palestinian State”

What
the EU has really been doing under the guise of humanitarian aid is
financing illegal Arab structures designed to create irreversible facts
on the ground favouring the claims of the Palestine Liberation
Organisation over the national and security interests of Israel. The EU
has been outed engaging in such reprehensible actions tainted by
illegality outside diplomatic norms.

Israel’s response to this
unprecedented ambush and illegal misconduct has been remarkably
restrained. Avivit Bar-Ilan director of the Israel Foreign Ministry’s
European Union Department has told EU Deputy Ambassador to Israel Mark
Gallagher:

“In Israel, illegal construction is dealt with according to the law.”

Bar-Ilan wryly observed:

“There
are 32 humanitarian crises around the world, but the European Union
opts to deal disproportionately only with what happens in Area C, which
undoubtedly isn’t in a humanitarian crisis”

The 28 Ambassadors –
carrying their demarche between their tails – should be sent packing to
Europe for a period of reflection and introspection.

Wednesday, 5 April 2017

So the wily and egregious Ken Livingstone's in trouble (slap on the wrist stuff) with the Labour Party, and a number of usual suspects have hot-footed it to his aid.

It's not as if the antisemitic ex-Mayor of London and Greater London Council chief has been expelled from the party: he's been suspended for another year (on top of the year just passed), and can still attend branch meetings and vote in ballots.

'Ken Livingstone has been suspended from Labour membership for two years, counted from last April, when he said on the radio that Hitler "was supporting Zionism - this was before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews"....Livingstone keeps on repeating that his Jewish friends agree with him; and there is indeed a small but noisy coterie of Jews ready to bear witness against the Jewish community and to whitewash their hero....

Livingstone is not a jolly, harmless old bloke who is basically on the right side and who supports the Palestinians; he has spent much of his life crafting antisemitic discourse for mass public consumption.

Last year

There is a bigger problem of political antisemitism in the Labour Party than Livingstone; the leadership of the party itself is implicated in the kind of politics which cultivates it.

And now, Labour is not even able decisively to distance itself from Livingstone by expelling him. No doubt, Livingstone will still be invited to do media work and he will still be treated as a respectable and experienced political leader; because even now, that is how he is seen by many.'

There's an online petition afoot, denying that Red Ken (as he used to be known) is an antisemite.

I don't very often repeat guest blogposts of mine on other websites, but I feel compelled to repeat one I wrote about a year ago for Elder of Ziyon.

Apologies if you've read it before.

I include copies of recent eloquent tweets by Wales-based academic Dr James Vaughan, whom I mention in the following:

Regarding the current crisis in the British Labour Party regarding the pestilential antisemitism lurking in certain cliques on the party’s Left, British journalist Nick Cohen has observed with his customary insight

“Challenging prejudices on the left wing is going to be all the more difficult because, incredibly, the British left in the second decade of the 21st century is led by men steeped in the worst traditions of the 20th.

When historians had to explain last week that if Montgomery had not defeated Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt then the German armies would have killed every Jew they could find in Palestine, they were dealing with the conspiracy theory that Hitler was a Zionist, developed by a half-educated American Trotskyist called Lenni Brenner in the 1980s.

When Jeremy Corbyn defended the Islamist likes of Raed Salah, who say that Jews dine on the blood of Christian children, he was continuing a tradition of communist accommodation with antisemitism that goes back to Stalin’s purges of Soviet Jews in the late 1940s.

It is astonishing that you have to, but you must learn the worst of leftwing history now. For Labour is not just led by dirty men but by dirty old men, with roots in the contaminated soil of Marxist totalitarianism. If it is to change, its leaders will either have to change their minds or be thrown out of office.”

The torrid abuse on social media (Twitter and Facebook) directed at anti-Corbyn Labour MP John Mann (pictured left, in an abusive Twitter post by an antisemite last year), a blunt honest Yorkshireman who exemplifies what is fair and honourable in the Labour tradition, has been a bulldoggish champion of Jews and foe of antisemitism and who has had the grit and integrity to tell fellow Labour MP Ken Livingstone just what is odious about the latter’s outburst regarding Hitler and Zionism, illustrates the antisemitic ratbaggery which infests many of the party’s present rank and file.

From a current pro-Ken petition!

That rank and file has of course been swelled by far leftists of the Israel-hating breed who joined the party in 2015 in order to elect Corbyn as its leader.

For, of course, Corbyn’s anti-Israel activism goes back a long way, not least in lending his name to a defence group for the London-based Palestinians Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, post-graduates who, angry at what they foresaw as a peace deal, used their scientific training to make car bombs that exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington and outside a Jewish charity in Finchley (The Times, 12 December 1996) – and also his championship of Mordechai Vanunu, the convicted Israeli nuclear secrets traitor who is on record as declaring that Judaism is a “backward religion” and that “efforts should be redoubled to create a Palestinian state rather than a Jewish one. There shouldn’t be a Jewish state.” (The Times, 20 April 2004).

The Labour Party’s infiltration by far left elements hostile to Israel began in the 1970s. (I was working at the London School of Economics and remember the era well, including how pro-Israel material left on notice boards would be torn down virtually as soon as posted.)

At that juncture the Labour Party, with a few exceptions (notably MPs Christopher Mayhew – who in a BBC interview referred to Jewish MPs as “the Israeli army below the gangway” and

who in 1970 told the Institute of Race Relations “I would like the Institute to consider the proposition that Mrs Golda Meir is most unlikely to have ancestors who once lived in Palestine, and far less likely to have such ancestors than Yasser Arafat” – David Watkins and Andrew Faulds) was still very much pro-Israel.

Anybody with a serious interest in the topic of Labour’s relations with Israel and the pernicious influence of Mayhew and the gang should read the article “’Mayhew’s Outcasts’: anti-Zionism and the Arab lobby in Harold Wilson's Labour” by Dr James Vaughan, a lecturer at what is generally considered the foremost International Relations Department in Britain, the long-established one at Aberystwyth University:

In order to illuminate what I write below, let me quote an extract from Dr Vaughan’s article (with footnote references omitted):

'An early sign that LMEC [Labour Middle East Council, founded after the Six Day War to counter “Zionist” influence in the party] and CAABU [the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding] were developing contacts with more radical pro-Palestinian groups can be seen in their members’ association with the Free Palestine newspaper in the 1970s. Free Palestine had begun life as a ‘violent and crudely written’ newsletter in 1968 and indirect links to CAABU were established when Claud Morris agreed to publish the newspaper in 1969.

That business relationship proved to be short-lived but the newspaper continued to cultivate links with British MPs and activists. Its editor, Louis Eaks, brought his own connections to the Young Liberal ‘Red Guard’ faction, and Free Palestine received political support and journalistic contributions from LMEC regulars like Mayhew, Watkins and Faulds. Morris later claimed not to have been aware of Free Palestine’s links to Arafat and the PLO when he agreed to publish the newspaper in 1969.

Those connections, however, are not especially difficult to uncover. A February 1975 editorial stated that Free Palestine’s line was ‘determined by the political and strategy decisions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Al Fatah’ whilst asserting that ‘this newspaper is not funded by either of these organisations.’ In 1981, inviting Andrew Faulds to join the editorial committee, Eaks claimed that Free Palestine was ‘independent of any specific Palestinian organisation’ although he noted that the newspaper was ‘committed to the Fatah/PLO line.’

Andrew Faulds?

A closer look at the newspaper’s parent company, Petra Publishing, however, reveals that among the firm’s directors was Khaled al Hassan (Abu Said), a founding member of Fatah and one of Arafat’s closest advisers. Another director was Saleh Khalili, who was also a member of Free Palestine’s editorial committee. Khalili has been identified by Alex Mitchell as a London-based agent of Abu Jihad, head of the PLO’s military operations.

According to Mitchell, Khalili’s job as the PLO’s ‘man-at-large in London’ brought him into collaborative liaison with Gerry Healey’s Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), whose publications were subsidised by Libya’s Colonel Gadhaffi, and, through the WRP, to the Lambeth Council leader, Ted Knight, who sat alongside Ken Livingstone on the editorial board of the Labour Herald newspaper. Mitchell has even claimed that Knight met with Arafat, Abu Jihad and Khalili in Tunis and succeeded in soliciting a £15,000 donation to the Labour Herald from the PLO.

Whatever the truth of that, it is certainly clear that much of the Labour Herald’s content was, in its anti-Zionism, scarcely distinguishable from that of Free Palestine. Free Palestine was also connected to the Palestine Action group, founded by Ghada Karmi in June 1972. It was Eaks who first informed Andrew Faulds of plans to establish ‘an anti-Apartheid type of organisation’ to lobby on behalf of the Palestinians ‘within the Labour, Communist and Liberal parties’ in April 1972 and the new group’s political platform included support for:

1. The restitution of all the rights of the Palestinians, especially the right to return to their homes.

2. The creation of a unitary, secular, democratic Palestine in which all citizens have equal rights irrespective of race or creed.

3. The struggle of the Palestinians for the liberation of their homeland.

LMEC considered the desirability of cooperation with Palestine Action at a meeting of its Executive Committee in October. Evidently, there were doubts about the wisdom of a formal association and, noting that ‘an approach had been made to LMEC to support the newly formed Palestine Action group’, it was ruled that ‘no official support should be given to this movement.’ However, whilst LMEC resolved to keep its distance from Palestine Action, there were no such restrictions upon individual members. Indeed, Andrew Faulds, a member of LMEC’s Executive Committee since January 1973,became far more than a passive supporter of Palestine Action.

In December 1973, Karmi wrote to Faulds to confirm that ‘you have been elected President of Palestine Action at our AGM’; an honorary position that Faulds happily accepted. Faulds played a key role in a major breakthrough for Palestine Action at the BBC. It came in the form of a television programme, ‘The Right to Return’, broadcast on 26 November 1976 as part of BBC 2’s ‘Open Door’ series. Faulds presented the programme, overseeing guest appearances from David Watkins and the anti-apartheid campaigner and Young Liberal chairman, Peter Hain.

A few days after the broadcast, Karmi reported that no less a PLO luminary than Abu Lutof (Farouk Kaddoumi) had praised the programme as ‘the best film he had ever seen on the Palestine issue’ and CAABU’s John Reddaway also congratulated Faulds for making ‘a notable contribution towards the exposition and defence of Palestinian rights.’”

You wouldn’t know it from his Wikipedia entry, but former British Labour MP and Cabinet minister Peter Hain (once touted as a future prime minister and now ensconced in the House of Lords) was the Peter Hain mentioned above, an anti-Israel activist of intemperate views. See my post here

As I note there, the Jewish Chronicle (5 September 1975) reported:

“Calls for the destruction of Israel as a state and for British Government recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were made by more than 1500 pro-Arab supporters who marched from Speakers’ corner to Downing Street on Sunday while the Jewish rally was in progress.”

Flanked by some 500 police officers, marchers included Communists, Marxists, Young Socialists, Young Liberals, as well as hundreds of Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis and other Arabs. Hain called on “radicals on the left-wing in Britain” to fight for the Palestinian cause.

(As will be seen in that blogpost of mine linked to above, Hain a few years ago attempted to put the “one state solution” – entailing the eradication of the sovereign state of Israel – back on the political agenda, but his views were disowned by the then party leadership.)

On 16 September 1978 The Times reported “growing concern” that the ANL had been infiltrated by, and was increasingly beholden to, the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which of course is so notoriously represented in anti-Israel protests today.

The 16,000-strong Federation of Conservative Students had accordingly dissociated itself from the ANL, and Dr Jacob Gewirtz (d. 1996), head of the Research Department of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, ‘says he is convinced that the league was the brain-child of the SWP and that party has “other fish to fry”’.

In a letter published in The Times on 25 September 1978, concerned reader George Mandel stated:

“The leaders of the ANL could dispel our doubts if they were to state publicly whether or not they believe that Zionism is fundamentally racist. If the answer is no, many Jews will be reassured. If it is yes, they should explain (not only to us but also to their own supporters) why they are inviting unrepentant racialists to join them.”

Disclosed a Jewish resident of Hove, Sussex, J. [Jack] Garnel, in a letter in The Times (27 October 1978):

Hain the Pain

‘I am able to quote a reply to part of Mr. Mandel’s question. It was given to me by Peter Hain, who describes himself as the Press Officer of the Anti-Nazi League. In November 1977, I wrote to Hain protesting about an anti-Zionist article of his published in Free Palestine ...' In his reply, dated November 11 [1977], Hain declared: “I believe Zionism to be a racist creed”. I agree with the decision of the Jewish Board of Deputies not to affiliate to the ANL. As a supporter of the right of Israel to exist, I am like most Jews classified as a Zionist. In combatting neo-Nazism, I have no desire to rub shoulders with anti-Zionists who support the PLO, which has been rightly described by Begin as a “Nazi organisation” and whose covenant is regarded by Israeli Jews as an Arabic Mein Kampf.’

On 1 November The Times carried a response from Peter Hain and the Jewish actress Miriam Karlin (whose name was misprinted as Karling at the foot of the letter), describing themselves as “Steering Committee, Anti-Nazi League”. Their letter began:

“The Anti-Nazi League has been subjected to a number of specious criticisms in your columns recently. First, J. Garnel … attacks the League because some of its members are opposed to Zionism. But many others involved in all levels of the league are pro-Zionist. Indeed, the signatories to this letter disagree on this matter.”

(That will certainly come as a surprise to those who remember the late Miriam Karlin as a leftist Israel basher and member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians; I suppose the alleged contrast between her and Hain suggests just how extreme Hain’s position was and seemingly still is.)

The letter continued:

“The only criterion for membership of the Anti-Nazi League is opposition to the Nazi activities and racist ideas of the National Front. We have no policy as an organisation on other political issues and our neutrality on the question of Zionism has been accepted by the Jewish Chronicle, which endorsed the League in an editorial last week…”

That assertion elicited a clarification (The Times, 3 November 1978) from the Jewish Chronicle’s acting editor, David Nathan:

‘In a leader last week the Jewish Chronicle suggested that there might be opportunities for the Board of Deputies to “loosely cooperate with the ANL in those areas of anti-racialist endeavour where the Board can satisfy itself that there is no political gain to the Socialist Workers’ Party or other anti-Zionist forces …. That is very far from blanket endorsement of the ANL.’

Also worth reading, by anyone interested, is the joint letter from Hain and ANL Organising Secretary Paul Holborow in The Times of 21 September 1978, and the joint letter in the same issue from Neil Harvey and Ian Harvey of Birmingham.

In response to the former letter, Graham Smith, Research Department, National Association for Freedom, observed that in the Socialist Worker of 27 May 1978 Holborow had appealed for funds for that paper in the following terms:

“The [ANL] has won support from people coming into politics for the first time. We must ensure that many of these people are won to the Socialist movement… We need to have Socialist Worker leading the way in this important job …. Any regular donation to the SWP will not only help to get rid of the Nazi rats, but to begin to get rid of the capitalist sewer that encourages them to breed.’

To quote Dr Vaughan again

‘The cry of ‘Israeli apartheid’ soon became a staple feature of British anti-Zionism. Writing in Free Palestine under the headline “Palestine must win”, Peter Hain likened Harold Wilson’s views on Israel to “statements rationalising and condoning racialism by right-wingers returning from South Africa”. The radicalism of Hain’s position at this time can be gauged from his rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and his assertion that “the case for the replacement of Israel by a democratic, secular state of Palestine must be put uncompromisingly” …. The tactic of equating Zionism with Nazism was another distasteful feature of the emerging language of anti-Zionist activism….

Such imagery was not itself new … but there was something more calculated about the use of Nazi imagery as a means of delegitimising Zionism in the 1970s. Mayhew certainly flirted with the analogy, writing in 1971 that “Germans who massacre Jews are tried and executed. Jews who massacre Arabs are elected to political leadership” …. Free Palestine pioneered visual representations of the Zionism-Nazism analogy. The front page of its April 1975 issue was adorned with the image of a Palestinian prisoner reaching out from a prison cell window, the bars of which formed the shape of a swastika. Ken Livingstone’s Labour Herald newspaper adopted the “Zionism equals Nazism” trope with equal enthusiasm in the 1980s; perhaps the most notorious example being the 1982 cartoon which, under the caption “The Final Solution”, depicted Israel’s Prime Minister, Menachem Begin in SS uniform, standing atop a mound of bloodied corpses, making a Nazi salute.’

In The Times (31 May 1984) regular columnist Bernard Levin drew attention to a campaign against Freemasons instituted by the Labour-majority Council of the London borough of Brent – “which was marked down by Mr Ken Livingstone for his prospective parliamentary pocket-borough, [and] has long been in the forefront of extremist local government politics…. In March, the previously subterranean campaign against Masons broke surface [in the borough]….”

To people who denied the analogy between the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Freemasons on the grounds that “a Jew cannot help being a Jew but a Mason does not have to be a Mason”, Levin pointed out scathingly that in a free society a person is entitled to belong to whatever group he wishes until such time long as an associated wrongdoing is involved, and added:

“Secret membership...” Thus do the kissing cousins of anti-semitism jusfify the new bigotry and discrimination … But I know a good many people who, though Jewish, go under an assumed non-Jewish name and do not admit their origin. Are they, too, unfit to serve on, or under, the Brent Council? And if I pass their names to a gossip columnist of The Guardian, will he, as he did with Masons, print a daily Jew-list, exposing them as doubly sinister, first because they are Jews and second because they conceal the fact?’

Levin went on: “anti-Semitism in Britain became socially and politically unacceptable when the world learnt just what it could lead to. But the bacillus was not altogether eradicated, and it has now found another potential group victim. And a group, so far from being safer than an individual, is more vulnerable, because it has no individual human identity, and can thus more easily be portrayed as truly diabolical.”

The Times of 7 March 1985 carried an article entitled “Why Labour is Losing its Jews” which is eerily pertinent to the present situation. I assume the author, Peter Bradley, described there as a member of the executive committee of Poale Zion, is none other than the Peter Bradley who from 1997 until 2005 sat as a Labour MP.

Mr Bradley began by observing that whereas in the immediate post-war years perhaps 75 per cent of Anglo-Jewry supported the Labour Party, the figure was now around 40 per cent.

Acknowledging that “many complex factors” underlay this downward trend, he held that one of them was “the fear that certain extreme forms of anti-Zionism are tainted with anti-semitism”.

After citing Shadow Defence Spokesman Denzil Davies’s contention at the 1984 Labour Party conference in Blackpool that an “antisemitic strand” was running through some parts of the party, Bradley gave two more recent examples of antisemitism.

One was the outburst of Sheffield Labour councillor George Moores, chairman of the South Yorkshire Police Authority, who said of Home Secretary Leon Brittan:

“I don’t know how to describe him. But if I did, I’d be accused of being a racist. There are too many of his ilk in Parliament. It’s worth looking into, that, even though there are quite a few of them who are Labour.”

Bradley remarked:

“In past decades such crudities might have served as isolated, proverbial exceptions to the rule of Labour tolerance, humanity, and, indeed, philo-semitism. But the apparent establishment of anti-Zionism as a cornerstone of Labour-left ideology has contributed to a significant change of atmosphere within the Labour movement which many otherwise tough-skinned Jewish socialists are finding altogether inimical.”

Of Ken Livingstone, then leader of the Greater London Council, he wrote:

'In an interview with the Israeli trade union paper Davar, he seemed to go out of his way to cause offence to Anglo-Jewry. With what has been described as an “ignorance matched only by his own insensitivity”, he [Livingstone] alleged that the Board of Deputies of British Jews is “dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists”. He [Livingstone] went on:“Progressive Jews support me; only Jews who hold extreme right-wing views oppose me” ….

What really stung Jewish members of the Labour Party was Livingstone’s claim that Jews had traditionally supported Labour “not necessarily because they were socialists, but because the Conservative party was anti-semitic.”Nothing could have been calculated to offer greater insult to Labour’s Jewish activists …

The implication is clear: only that small number of Jews who subscribe to Livingstone’s kind of anti-Zionism can properly call themselves “progressive”; to be acceptable Jews must repudiate the cause that is central to Jewish secular life, Zionism, and must subscribe to a socialist triumphalism which asserts that Zionists are racists because they subscribe to a national liberation movement (while Palestinians who support their own are not); which identifies Israel’s leaders with the Nazi architects of the Final Solution … The list of campaign groups, sects and caucuses in which Zionists, and by extension Jews, are no longer welcome is a very long one.

Is it really surprising, many Jews are asking, that the Jewish attachment to the labour movement is becoming tenuous? For in almost all sections of the “progressive” Left, Jews claim they are being made to feel they are welcome only if they are at least non-Zionist, and preferable sufficiently anti-Zionist to be paraded as token Jews who dispel all suspicion of anti-semitism …’ (Emphasis added]

Update (hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman):

Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, has released an extraordinary statement about the party’s decision not to expel Ken Livingstone. He says it is “incomprehensible”. Here it is in full.

'I find it incomprehensible that our elected lay members on the disciplinary panel found Ken Livingstone guilty of such serious charges, and then concluded that he can remain a member of the Labour party.

When I read the words of chief rabbi Mirvis, who says that ‘the Labour party has failed... the Jewish community, it has failed its members and it has failed all those who believe in zero tolerance of anti-semitism’, I can’t disagree with him. I wish I could, but I can’t. I am ashamed that we have allowed Mr Livingstone to cause such distress.

It isn’t just Jewish people who feel disgusted and offended by what Mr Livingstone said and by the way he has conducted himself over this matter, and it isn’t just Jewish Labour members who feel ashamed of any indulgence of his views anywhere in the Labour party. This shames us all, and I’m deeply saddened by it.

Mr Livingstone’s unrepentant media appearances in recent days have continued to discredit the party I love. His current behaviour is still bringing the Labour party into disrepute. It is hard not to conclude that his use of inflammatory language to dismiss the fully justified outrage of the Jewish community and others will incite further distortions of the Holocaust in our public discourse.

My party is not living up to its commitment to have a zero tolerance approach to anti-semitism. I will continue the fight to ensure that it does, and I will press my colleagues to do so too.'

Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs

Two stalwarts go sleuthing:

For their findings cliick on image

"The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine"

To read the research report click on image

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'Rod Liddle (2018)

Pro-Israel Down Under

Shalom and Welcome to my blog!I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page ishere

'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011)Scroll to end for more quotations

Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop?

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Balfour and Beyond

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Try this for Sizer

Sizer 101. Click image for link

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

BDS is Antisemitic

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The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS

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'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

"Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah"

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Maps of Mendacity & Mischief

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These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 – intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 – and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced – has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today.David Singer (2016)

How They Twist the Truth!

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Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth.David Singer (2016)

Exposing Lies

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The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years?David Singer (2016)

Telling the Truth

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The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.Andrew Roberts (historian)

A voice of courage & reason

He knows, y'know

An Aussie demo against BDS

On the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016)

An awkward fact for some!

Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012)

BDS hypocrisy!

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Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

A nuclear Iran threatens our existence

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.Eric Hoffer (1968)

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אם תרצו , אין זו אגדה

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs...Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975)

I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe.Oriana Fallaci

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves.Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies.George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970)

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

About Me

I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in
politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair.
Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html

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The spiritual awakening which Jews experienced almost without exception last June must not be allowed to become a sealed and finished episode.... Support must be rallied among men of goodwill and their governments if we are to reach that secure and just peace in the attainment of which Israel has never ceased to believe. President Zalman Shazar (1968)

Our judicial system is one of the best in the whole world. Our democracy is the only one in the Middle East.... Just imagine, what would have happened if the Arabs had, like us, accepted the Partition resolution? There would be a Palestinian State living side by side in peace, security, and, I can add, prosperity with the State of Israel, 62 years later. [C]ome to Israel, and realize how small Israel is and what a wonderful place it is. Diplomat Gabriella Shalev (2010)

Israel's Arab citizens are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy genuine civic and religious rights. Religious freedom is protected in Israel as nowhere else, tragically, in the Middle East. And civil rights, of course, there's a supreme court judge who is an Arab, ministers including in my government who are Arabs, Druze, and members of parliament who are Arabs and so on. I would like to see more involvement of Arabs in civil life.Bibi Netanyahu on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show (5 Nov. 2017)